UM Student Combines Wildlife Biology, Data Science as Goldwater Scholar

By Skylar Rispens, UM News Service

MISSOULA – University of Montana student Bella Wengappuly recently was named a 2026-27 Goldwater Scholar, earning one of the nation’s most prestigious undergraduate honors for students pursuing research careers in science, engineering and mathematics.

Wengappuly, a rising senior from Charlotte, North Carolina, is pursuing double majors in wildlife biology and computer science. The Davidson Honors College student intends to pursue a doctorate in quantitative ecology with the goal of modernizing wildlife research methods and expanding conservation research capabilities worldwide.

“Bella has already demonstrated considerable independence in her research and has adeptly integrated her two majors in projects at home and abroad,” said Kylla Benes, director of UM’s Office of External Scholarships and Fellowships. “Her goals in both the science and practice of wildlife conservation are unique and timely, and she has the skills and the drive to accomplish them. Bella is one of those rare students who you know can transform their field.”

This year, the Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation selected 454 students nationwide as Goldwater Scholars from a pool of more than 5,000 eligible sophomores and juniors. The Goldwater scholarship honors U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater and is designed to support students interested in research careers in science, engineering and mathematics. Wengappuly is the 19th student from the University to receive the Goldwater Scholarship and the only student from a college in Montana to be recognized this year. The most recent recipient was Lydia Garrick just last year.

For Wengappuly, the path to UM began with a passion for wildlife and the outdoors.

“Over the course of high school, I knew I wanted to do something outside with animals, so I started exploring wildlife biology degrees,” she said. “I looked up what the best schools were and found UM and decided that's where I needed to be.”

Although she grew up in North Carolina, Montana had long been familiar territory for Wengappuly. Her mother’s family is from Lewistown and works in cattle ranching, giving her opportunities to visit the state during summers growing up.

During her first semester, Wengappuly enrolled in a course focused on different career paths in wildlife biology. Guest speakers in the class, as well as informational interviews with faculty, staff and upper-division students, shaped her understanding of how computing and ecological research could intersect.

“At first, I didn’t really see the connection between computer science and wildlife biology, but every time I’d meet someone in the field, I’d ask about how they thought I could blend them into a career,” Wengappuly said. “The consensus was focusing on research, data management and conservation, because the first thing you need to do in order to conserve a species is understand where they are and how many are there. That’s all data and data science.”

Eventually, the self-proclaimed high achiever tacked on a certificate in Geographic Information Systems after taking an introductory course.

“This combination of degrees provides me with the tools that I can then apply to a workplace in the future and make an impact,” she said.

Wengappuly also completed a 10-week summer internship with UM’s Autonomous Aerial Systems Office through NASA’s Space Grant Consortium workforce development program. During the internship, she helped collect more than 200 highly accurate GPS points across campus to help align aerial survey imagery with mapped satellite imagery. She also conducted aerial surveys of working rangelands and led a team of nine interns to develop landcover analysis maps that informed regenerative agriculture practices.

Her research experiences also reinforced her interest in combining technology with conservation science. Wengappuly worked with a wildlife biology graduate student Anna Kurtin on a conservation research project in Central and Eastern Montana involving audio recordings and machine learning to monitor the black-billed cuckoo, a very rare, endangered bird species.

“This is a super cryptic bird, and it’s hard to detect,” she said. “When it does show up, it’s living in these big cottonwood forests, so you’re probably not going to see it, but maybe you’ll hear it. So our project blended together these different tools, and it was a cool intersection of data science and wildlife because we were using and developing a machine learning algorithm.”

Wengappuly also took her research efforts abroad through UM’s Franke Global Leadership Initiative. During her “beyond the classroom” experiential learning, she spent three months in South Africa, supporting research projects in wildlife rehabilitation and monitoring, as well as a captive breeding program for cheetah conservation. Wengappuly also spent time studying at a field guide college.

She said both her upbringing in a language immersion school and her international experiences inspired her desire to use her skills globally.

“Why would I keep my skills only in the United States when I could have a broader impact abroad in places that don’t have the resources that we do?” Wengappuly said. “I would like to work in international conservation, uplifting grassroots programs through the development and dissemination of monitoring tools that use modern methods.

“I want to stay engaged and learn about things from around the world,” she continued. “Maintaining that diversity of thought and experience is very important to me. I have a lot to share, too.”

Outside the classroom, Wengappuly founded UM’s origami club after discovering there wasn’t one dedicated to the art form on campus. She learned origami while growing up in a language immersion school that offered programs in French, German, Mandarin and Japanese.

“I really wanted to find a community of origami folders, but that wasn’t really a thing here,” she said. “People talk about how you’ll find your place in college, so I decided to make my own place. If you can’t find it, build it.”

Wengappuly is finishing an undergraduate thesis project that tests the effectiveness of various machine learning algorithms for identifying individual wolverines for endangered species conservation, as well as a pilot project that explores the possibility of using drones for monitoring medium-sized carnivores using snow track surveys in rugged alpine terrain. As she looks ahead to graduate school and a career in conservation research, Wengappuly remains motivated by a sense of purpose and curiosity.

“I don't have any regrets. That’s part of my personality and how I try to walk through life,” she said. “I try to minimize my regrets and maximize my satisfaction as a human being and my sense of purpose, because there’s so many things you could do in life, why not do what you can to make the world a healthier, happier place?”

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Contact: Dave Kuntz, UM director of strategic communications, 406-243-5659, dave.kuntz@umontana.edu.